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Hi TM,

For the last week i have been very excited about a new card routine which i have been developing, but the one elemt which i am not happy with is the deck switch, which is unfortunatly essential.

At the moment i am working on Juan Tamariz's 'crossing the gaze switch', as taught in Micheal Close's Workers Series. It is undoubtedly a wonderful switch, and i use it all the time for smaller objects, but im having trouble with a deck, as i feel its larger sizes risks giving the swtich away. At the moment i use my jacket to hide the switch as i reach into the inside poctet for pens.

I was hoping that someone might be able to reccomend a good source for learning other effective methods of switching an entire deck. Are there any gimmicks which coould help?

If anyone is interested in the routine, the effect is this:

A blank deck of cards is shown, i comment that im not sure what they are for, but they can be used to draw on and make your own games. I tell them that that we will try a test. The spectator is asked who they're favourite member of the royal family is, and then asked to imagine what card they think that person would be.

They answer: prince harry- jack of diamonds ( for example)

They are given one blank card, and the deck is then replaced in the box. I hand them some some cloured pens and ask them to draw they're
chosen card. When they have finished i comment on the envelope which has been on the table the entire time. I say that earlier i drew a playing card one of the blank cards, it is removed and thankfully matches they're selection! this gets good reactions everytime, i draw attention back to the blank deck of cards. I say that the cool thing about it is that if you remove the blank sticker, they print back into a full pack. I peel off the 'BLANK', label and show the deck restored to a fully printed pack, and riffle through to show the faces of the pack- fully printed and in new deck order.
Then i give them the deck, and sandwhich it between they're hands. One tap with a blue sharpie, they lift they're hand and find the deck has now changed from red to blue. It is of course fully examinable.

It would be cool to post the method for this routine up somewhere and get some feed back, If anyone is interested or could give any advice then feel free to PM me.

All the best

Atomo

could you just do a switch in your pocket while searching for the pocket with the pens in? or do you want the deck to stay pretty much on the table the whole time?

My aim when creating this routine and its methods was to try and leave the spectator weith no where to go for an explanation, one effect covers the method of the other leaving them severely confused at the end, but with all the magic moments seeming natural and logical.
While i know that in the pocket switches do work well, i do not want them to be able to trace back to that moement, and have even the faintest idea how it was all possible. So i dont know if there are any diffent methods out there, i but would ideally like an invisable deck switch, the closest i have come to this is the behind the jacket switch, as i mentioned before, it does the job nicely, but i geusse im just being a pefrecetionist.

any help much appreciated. does anyone know which book juan tamariz covers his deck switches in?

How about not actually doing a switch at all but instead use the good old method of using a hindu shuffle to make the deck appear to be all blanks.

If you're not familiar with this, have a look at Double Though Projhection in Mark Wilsons book, there's also another good example of it in Roayl Raod but I can't remember the trick name off the top of my head.

I guess the hindu wouldn't be able to allow the deck to be in new deck order though? hmmmmmmmm

ah, I didn't spot the bit about it being in new order.

Ok then another idea, what about using blank backed cards? They could be shown as a pack of blank cards, popped into the box, the box flipped and brought out as regular cards. You'd have to do a little bit of mischief with a double backer so that the spec would think that the cards have normal backs but shouldn't be too difficult.

Of course this does make the trick very dirty and gimmicky and that might not be what you're after.

If "Crossing the Gaze" is the same switch as demonstrated by John Archer on "Educating Archer", I would keep with that one, it's a good un - he uses the card box as cover, have somewhere to ditch the other deck, looks very smooth.